Preview: Billy Norrby’s “The Stone Like” at CHG Circa

A statement against complacency, Billy Norrby’s new body of work, “The Stone Like,” is a series of paintings that borrows from the Romanticist tradition with its light, airy style. Norrby contrasts the vibrance of youth with what he describes as intellectual decay. “‘The Stone Like’ refers to not only reoccurring visual elements in my show. Old, blackened metal and craggy landscapes, but also a state of hardening and petrification as people grow stale or more fixed in their ideas and lives. It’s like a regression into a more primordial, rock-like being if we imagine the past as being this rugged proto terrain of stones, boulders and mountains,” he told Hi-Fructose in an email.

But “The Stone Like” is not as pessimistic as this description implies. In Pandemonium (pictured below), a female figure emanates a rainbow of light that combats the dark shadows surrounding her — a metaphor for her vitality and inner strength. “The Stone Like” opens at CHG Circa in Culver City on October 26. Take a look at a sneak peek of the work in the show below.